Summary: Pressures associated with the rise of the so-called knowledge economy, increased participation in higher education and its consequences in terms of institutional differentiation, processes of political and administrative devolution and the desire for increased accountability of public funded institutions have all lead to a rediscovery in recent decades of the relevance and responsibility of higher education to local and regional communities.  Under such pressures universities have been keen to publicise their 'third mission' and show in particular that through the generation of a local pool of conceptual and managerial skills, the provision of applied research and other transfer activities, they have, more or less successfully , been able to define themselves the terms of their own engagement with their immediate locality.

The extent to which strategies raise their profile as agencies of cultural regeneration and of tackling disadvantage reflect primarily universities' dependency towards state policies, their positioning within a competitive higher education market, or their level of structural embeddedness within the social fabric of their local environment is the main focus of this presentation.  More specifically, I will seek to relate the levels and nature of effective and perceived impacts (both negative and positive) of a university over its immediate environment to its rhetoric of engagement.

These multilevel interactions will be discussed using findings from the ESRC-funded HEART project (Higher Education And Regional Transformation) examining the complex relationship between 'disadvantaged' communities and their local higher education institutions in the UK.
 

Profile: Yann Lebeau is lecturer in Educational Research  at the University of East Anglia (School of Education and Lifelong Learning).  He has previously held teaching and research positions in France (Brest, Bordeaux), in Nigeria (Ibadan) and at the Open University.  His research interests lie in the sociology of higher education communities and where higher education and social change intersect.  He has done extensive empirical research on the University/society nexus in Africa and in the UK and is a member of several education and development research networks.  Dr Lebeau worked on the ESRC-TLRP project "The social and organisational mediation of university learning" from 2004 to 2008, and is co-director of an ESRC-funded study of the role of higher education institutions in regional transformation (HEART project, 2007-2009).

Summary: This presentation provides a critical overview of the discourse concerning Higher Education as promoted by the EU with respect to the idea of rendering Europe the ‘most competitive knowledge economy’. This has implications for a variety of fields notably university continuing education and lifelong learning in general. A critical analysis of this EU discourse in light of recent trends in HE in various places in Europe will be provided.

Profile: Professor Mayo is Associate Professor in the Department of Education Studies at the University of Malta. He has published many books and articles in the area of adult education, and is widely known for his books Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education. Possibilities for Transformative Action (1999) and Liberating Praxis. Paulo Freire's Legacy for Radical Education and Politics (2004), the latter having been granted an American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Award in 2005. In 2006, he coauthored with Carmel Borg Learning and Social Difference. Challenges for Public Education and Critical Pedagogy and. in 2007, again with Borg, Public Intellectuals, Radical Democracy and Social Movements. A book of Interviews.

Summary: Most development and planning strategies begin with doing 'needs surveys' or other methods of creating inventories of deficits and problems in a local community. The result of this approach is to focus on outside resources to 'fix' the locality or its' people. An 'asset based' approach is an alternative strategy that recognizes the you do not know what you need until you know what you have. This presentation will describe community approaches to doing 'capacity and asset inventories' as the initial and necessary step to achieve successful development initiatives.

Profile: For nearly three decades, John McKnight has conducted research on social service delivery systems, health policy, community organizations, neighbourhood policy, and institutional racism. He currently directs research projects focused on asset-based neighbourhood development and methods of community building by incorporating marginalized people.